Tag Archives: Tom Armistead

Investment banks ran amok and created financial disaster; Governments bought up the debt and have created sovereign debt bubbles and a crisis in the Eurozone; banks are now found to be rigging LIBOR and potentially costing savers and borrowers billions of dollars; banks are accused of rigging software that would have told regulators they were channeling drug money and terrorist finances through the banking system; small fines are levied which provides a huge rate of return on those “misdemeanors”.

So it goes on and on from when “the tide went out” in 2007 and we have forgotten the ever-depressing news from just a few years ago. Back in 2009, Lloyds TSB (now 43% owned by the British Government) was fined $350m for similar offences to those HSBC are alleged to have committed.

The US Department of Justice alleged that dating back to 1995, Lloyds falsified wire transfers involving countries or individuals on the US sanctions list.

In effect, the bank removed customer information so that transfers would pass undetected through sanction-focused filters at US banks, violating US federal law aimed at starving terrorists of money in certain countries.

Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau said: “The Iranian banks have money on deposit in London with Lloyds. They were having Lloyds send the money to the US and beyond and stripping the identification.”

In a statement, Lloyds TSB noted that it set aside £180m last year pending the settlement, and said that it “does not anticipate any further enforcement actions.”

Now, HSBC have made a similar settlement and the regulators are lauded for their achievements three years after the almost-forgotten Lloyds TSB case.

Nepotism

Government, politics and financiers have run nations together for hundreds of years. It is unlikely to change anywhere or anytime soon. What properly functioning societies should be able to do is to work to prevent the worst wrongs being committed. We clearly have not managed that in the last five years and our counter-balancing systems are not in place.

Especially in the USA and UK (but the same is true elsewhere as well) Governments and politicians in most major parties have contrived to provide the finance industry with freedom and have reduced the risk of failure to almost zero. This is now a tired story, repeated many times. Yet, five years on from the initial discovery of sub-prime devastation in the USA, has anything changed? Do we even recognize the real problems?

The nepotism within the family of government and finance persists and becomes more insidious. Banks and the finance industry are by far the most favoured by politicians. Bankers and financiers understand what drives the business of politics as well as what drives the engine of business on which they depend. A core problem is the very understandable reluctance of politicians (and in most cases their lack of understanding) to do anything. Democracies have lost the grip over a key element of our societies – and there is little being done to remedy that problem.

The reasons are simple: one the one hand, banking provides the lubrication for economic growth and, during good times, huge tax revenues ; on the other, political parties are funded by those who have made and still make their money in banking and finance. This is especially true in the USA and UK – which are heavily tilted economically towards the finance industry, but it is also true in the EZ land wherever banking exists (internationally, nationally or regionally, politicians are usually in hock to the finance industry). The interlocking of politics and banking is extraordinarily tight – it has been for a long time. We should not be surprised that very little is being done now to change this. Governments bailed out the banks by taking on their debts and continue to supply massive liquidity to the banking system. The combination of economic growth, tax receipts and party donations is too big for them to ignore.

Post-2007

We say the word changed post 9/11, but what changed post-2007, after the banks were shown to have failed our economies. Sure, many people now vilify the banking community as they do wartime con men or spivs. We feel that the banks and the bankers (especially those in investment banking) have taken us all for a ride. This was a ride they could not lose. They made huge money for themselves as individuals on the upside and lost nothing on the downside. True, a few like Fred Goodwin and recently Bob Diamond have lost their jobs – but, they remain seriously wealthy, having never actually paid for mistakes in the way an entrepreneur would have. They haven’t lost their homes whereas many others have. The risk: reward ratio was and remains massively in favour of bankers and the banks. Nothing has changed.

Banks that are too big to fail are still in place and the Vickers Review in the UK envisages nothing more than Chinese walls between the casino elements and the more traditional forms. Chinese Walls in banks (!) – the same banks that have engaged in LIBOR fixing, in sub-prime marketing, in money laundering. The same banks that are deemed to have dubious ethics and poor control systems, where compliance officers resign because of the lousy job they do and are given as good a job elsewhere in the business (just like arms manufacturers did for their staff caught bribing in the 1980’s).

Banks have now taken on the mantle of the defense companies that were ridiculed in the 1970’s and later for corruption on a world-wide scale (and where corruption continues in many, but differing areas). From the introduction of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act – FCPA – in 1977 in the USA (which is now under sustained attack in the USA by Chambers of Commerce), it took over 30 years for the UK to pass the Bribery Act and it will take many more years to ensure proper implementation. It is a relentless task to keep corruption under control – society has, though, a way of dealing with it, an understanding of it and a willingness to keep at it.

The Military-Industrial complex remains in place but it is no longer the ogre it once was (in the West anyway – even if the corruption engaged in by China, Russia and other newer entrants is destabilizing that market and affecting the resolve). Now, a bigger threat is the Financialist-Political complex (see Forbes July 2012 – Beware the Financial-Political Complex ) that has forever been in place and is now assuredly seen as a major threat. The only benefit of the financial disasters of 2007 is that the Financialist-Political Complex is no longer under cover – it is now there for all to see just as the Military-Industrial Complex was “uncovered” by Eisenhower in the 1950’s. The big question for the rest of society is what to do about it.

Financialism is an economic system where the primary activity consists of creating and manipulating financial instruments. Financial instruments…are in their original form firmly linked to economic reality. However, when financialism sets in, financial instruments become progressively further removed from their role in supporting commerce in the real world and develop a life of their own.
I would add that Financialism should also include the undue influence that banking and finance have on politics, politicians and governments.

An FCPA for the FPC (Financialist-Political Complex)

The inherent corruption of the investment banking industry, its progressive drive towards Financialism and its close relationship with Government means that it will take enormous sense of purpose and quite some time to make a change.

What the world needs is an FCPA not just for Financialism but for the Financialist-Political Complex – the FPC – where the world of banking and crazed financial instruments has bank-rolled governments and carries governments and politicians by its supposed economic force.

An FCPA for the FPC would mean that we first have to recognize the problem. It is not just a problem of the banking industry but a recognition that financialism and government are too intertwined and need to be separated – especially in the USA and UK, but, because the world is a global market, world-wide in a way that the OECD convention bribery made the FCPA a world-wide requirement.

We need to ensure that tax havens (the spiritual and economic home of financialists) are deprived of their tax haven status.

We need to ensure that taxes are paid where profits are made and that the virtual reality world of financialism is not allowed to exploit loopholes in tax regimes.

We need to ensure that political parties are not beholden on financialism so that funding for political parties is through contributions limited in size to, say, £10,000 or $15,000 or €11,500 or similar per person or company or association or union.

We need to ensure that that the financial instruments of the financialist industry are separated from the rest of the banking industry – not just by Chinese walls but by legal separation into separate entities.

We need to ensure that compliance regulation is strong in all countries allowed to carry out international banking and that compliance officers and managers are independently regulated and independent from those who sell financialist products. FATF needs to be given real powers but the OECD and other multi-national organisations should seek to ensure that banking and politics are kept apart and that influences are controlled. This will not inhibit growth – the disasters of the last 5 years have shown the impact of poor banking – its cost is in trillions of dollars.

We need to ensure that risk:reward ratios are proper and commensurate with those faced by entrepreneurs – who risk their homes and all their wealth. Managers should not see upward only rewards at the expense of shareholders and society.

The FCPA that led to the OECD anti-bribery convention and later to the Bribery Act in the UK was a forerunner that helped to shape the course that the western world took in terms of governance and anti-bribery. Its impact, itself, is in danger of being blown off course by the economic problems caused by the financial collapse of 2007 as much as by the new players of China, India, Russia and Brazil. Nevertheless, it shaped a cultural direction that has endured and has done much to re-shape the military-industrial complex.

The financialist-political complex is where the military-industrial complex was before 1977. It needs a massive change in our culture and an understanding that it is not just focused on the banks but also the governments and politicians that depend on them so much that need changing.

Let me finish with another quote from Tom Armistead:

Banks need to be returned to their primary purpose, which is to serve the real economy, as financial intermediaries between those who work, save and invest, and those who need funds to create new means of production, or to buy a home, or a car.

To go slightly further:

Banks and the whole finance industry need to to be separated from their nepotistic relationship with Governments and politicians so that their interdependence is no longer the massive risk that forces all of us to pay for it. We need an FCPA for the FPC – the financialist-political complex.